rison. “Whenever events occur or are presented contiguously, the first one colors how the second one is perceived and judged,” says Bandura. Using this mechanism allows people to justify self-deplored acts by comparing and contrasting the self-deplored acts to blatant acts of inhumanities. For example, someone can morally disengage from a self-deplored act such as murder by comparing their crime to the number of murders committed by Robert Yates, and then surmising that they are not a murder per se, as they only killed one person. “In social conflicts, injurious behavior usually escalates, with each side lauding its own behavior but morally condemning that of their adversaries as heinous…. …Cognitive restructuring of behavior through moral justifications and palliative characterizations is the most effective psychological mechanism for disengagement of moral self-sanctions. This is because moral restructuring not only eliminates self-deterrents but engages self-approval in the service of destructive exploits. What was once morally condemnable becomes a source of self-valuation” (Bandura, 1990).Displacement of responsibility is another method of moral disengagement, and is put into effect when the people who are committing inhumane acts can readily see the effects that their actions are having on the victims. It is also used when the acts leave the perpetrator as the only one hanging if the tables are turned. This mechanism is based on the theory that people will always act in a manner inconsistent with their beliefs, provided a suitable and credible authority figure accepts responsibility for the consequences of the actions. Based on this, the people who are actually committing the acts are spared the self-prohibiting reactions as they assert that they actions that they are committing are of the authority’s direction, hence, the blame is displaced to the authority. Diffusion of respon...
